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Blow The Cartridge #3

Time Management (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Arm Tingling)

by Cameron on May 14, 2011

I’m a fairly busy guy.

I have a day job that involves the corruption of innocent youth through the creation of video games. It’s a pretty good job full of creative challenges and I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve been working on lately when it’s revealed at E3 in a few weeks.

A few weeks ago I’ve also helped start a PR company for independent video game developers who want help getting the word out about their game. This has been more successful than we though it would be initially and has resulted in a lot of after hours work, but it’s going to lead to some really exciting things!

I also like to spend quality time with the wife and cats, because they are what it’s all about, you know. ‘Nuff said.

And then of course there’s this darn comic…

I’ve been putting a lot more effort into the comic over the last few months, I hope it’s been noticable. Probably not, nobody reads stupid comics, ha. But at any rate the hours needed to make comic have been getting longer and combined with everything else it was really starting to turn me into a miserable old grump.

No, wait, that’s being too kind – I was being a stressed out asshat. An absolute nightmare to be around.

Now if thIs was any other comic this would be the inevitable blog post where the artist says they’re taking a break (that they never return from) or going to change to a less frequent schedule (that they stick to for a week before taking a break that they never return from). But not THIS idiot. Instead I’m trying to work smarter and manage my time better so I’m not up till 1 in the morning every night working on a comic I’m not happy with anyway.

Last week I set aside two hours on a Saturday to write the following week’s comics. It was awesome. No distractions, no stressing out about a deadline and having to come up with something I cam draw that morning, just me in my hammock watching the cats and writing. And then during the week I drew the comics.

It was AWESOME. I got all the comics done by Thursday with tons of time to spare. I felt so much more relaxed. When it was time to draw, I could just DRAW instead of waste half my time trying to think of the joke. The jokes turned out better. The art turned out better. I spent the week much much happier and more productive on my other tasks. The hours I spend on it may not have changed but splitting the time into writing and drawing separately has worked out great.

Plus it’s always nice to start the weekend on the hammock.

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How Do You Make Webcomics?

by Cameron on May 3, 2011

On the final day of Supanova Brisbane last month the friendly folks at Ultima Java came by and asked me to talk into the camera a bit about anything I wanted.

So, I chose to talk about the clubs you need to join and the permissions you need to get from people before you can make a webcomic.

Enjoy!

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PRESIDOG ANNOUNCES BIN LADEN IS DEAD

by Cameron on May 2, 2011

OH PRESIDOG

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Supanova Brisbane Report

by Cameron on April 9, 2011

Wow.

Maybe it’s just a side effect from it being my first con I spent as an exhibitor instead of a visitor or worker, and I’m full of fresh faced enthusiasm, which will be worn down to a bitter stub over the years, but I had an amazing time at Supanova!

“Doing” the con has been on my to-do list since I started Funny Webcomic, but work commitments kept me from this for the past two years. I was determined to make up for lost time this year, and boy howdy did I make good on that promise.

First of all, this is what my table looked like:

Pretty neat, huh? Yeah. Big thanks to Brad Daniels of Groovy Gravy for letting me share his Artist’s Alley table. Groovy Gravy is a good book, the new issue has a new three page Plant-Man + Flowerin’ story in it. I’m kinda bummed since I lost my freebie copies but I hope to buy another copy soon.

The first day was a “preview” day, meaning that crowds were very light compared to the upcoming weekend. That being said, I don’t think I ever really spent more then thirty seconds without talking to people that came by the booth to check things out. I gave away a lot of flyers, too. It was always cool handing someone a flyer and seeing them laugh at one of the comics on it. A really nice success came on Sunday afternoon where someone walked by, clearly not interested in being sold something, and within 30 seconds of me handing him the flyer he had a good laugh at the sample comics and bought a Funny Book Comic. SCORE.

I quickly hit upon the idea of drawing sketches of any character people request – as long as they wear a pot plant on their head. That usually got a chuckle and  they turned into the big surprise hit of the show for me. After I made a few to keep looking busy I had some on display (Wolverplant, Guy Gardener as The Green Plantern, Homer Plantson…I did a sketch of Pikachhu and that was a big hit with female audience members.) people would come up and ask if they could get one, too. And they gave me money. YAY MONEY. Big thank you to everyone who came for a sketch, I hope you liked them! I did a ton of them for people including Ghost Rider, Black Cat and even someone’s pet dog.

Two copies of the mini were lost due to me handing people it to look at, and they just walked off with it – maybe they thought it was free. I ended up having to make a quick “Comics about old video games: $2” sign to place on them to stop this happening again. Live and learn!

All in all, I had about an hour, tops, where I wasn’t crazily busy drawing, talking to people about Funny Webcomic, or selling books. The time whizzed by so fast. I miss the insanity!

It was so awesome to meet everyone who stopped by our table to say hi – especially so when it was someone who has already read the comic! I was so fortunate to have great table neighbours – particularly the aforementioned Brad, and Anthony Pike who does cool cartoony comics that were a lot brighter and happy looking than a lot of the dark gloomy fare on offer, and the amazingly talented Paul Mason who does a comic called The Soldier Legacy, which has a lot of Jack Kirby (and in my mind, some John Severin) in its DNA. Big hellos to the friendly and talented folk at Ultima Java who I’m sure will be hosting their own table at the next show.

So…

I’ll be back next time. It’s way too early to go to the interstate shows, but I think this is a good base to start building another local show appearance. Thankfully the awesome folks at Supanova announced that they are starting a new show in Gold Coast next year, and another show in Brisbane in November!

I’ll definitely print up some more Funny Book Comics, but I need to find a local printer or some way to eliminate the crazy shipping costs from America. I want to get the second Funny Book Comic out by then, too, so I have something new to sell. If anyone out there can suggest a local printer, I’m all ears.

This con has energized me so much for this year. I really feel like 2011 is going to be a turning point for Funny Webcomic. I have a lot of great plans for this and I really can’t wait to see what’s around the corner.

I hope you’ll be along for the ride.

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SEE YOU AT BRISBANE SUPANOVA!

by Cameron on March 26, 2011

I am so excited right now I can’t even tell you. Well actually I can tell you. So I shall!

I will be having my first convention experience as a comic artist guy this weekend at the Supanova convention in good ol’ Brisbane, Australia. Supanova is always an awesome time and this weekend is going to be MASSIVE. There’ll be tons of cool stuff to check out, play and maybe even take home with you if you play your cards right.

HERE’S WHERE I’LL BE, PLEASE COME AND SAY HI AND OFFER ME COOKIES:

I’ll be sharing the booth with my pals at Edge Comix who make the very spiffy Groovy Gravy anthology. I’ll be the fat guy throwing rocks at the Anime cosplay booth attendants. Ha ha just kidding kids don’t throw rocks.

So? What will I be selling? Well feast your eyes on THIS COOL COMIC JUNK:

Funny Book Comic, the first year of Funny Webcomic collected in one handy-dandy volume with extra material and commentary, will be on sale for you to enhance your life with. It’s 110 pages of pure comicy awesomeness!

AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH:

PLANT-MAN #1 – NOW IN SUPER FUN COMIC FORM! This is a BRISBANE SUPANOVA EXCLUSIVE comic that includes some of Plant-Man + Flowerin’s earliest (and wackiest) adventures. It’s going to be RIDICULOUS.

LAST MINUTE UPDATE! I’ve made a special mini comic called BLOW THE CARTRIDGE that will also be on sale at the show – a small collection of Old Video Game Jokes – it looks great in print!


PLUS if that wasn’t enough Groovy Gravy #13 will also be on the table, which includes a brand new, never before seen three page Plant-Man + Flowerin’ story!

Of course I will sign the CRAP out of everything, and award passerby with HIGH FIVES. YEAH!!!!!!

Brisbane RNA Showgrounds. April 1 to 3. SEE YOU THERE!

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Convention Alert: Supanova!

by Cameron on February 26, 2011

This year is going to be full of interesting new things – and me “doing” a comic convention is one of them!

I will be the Supanova convention in Brisbane, Australia from April 1 to 3 this year! Mark your calendars, people!

Come one, come all, and feast your eyes upon yours truly as I try to sell comics and not sweat too much in that overcrowded, stupidly hot room. It’ll be a blast!

I’ll be selling copies of Funny Book Comic, and a special something Plant-Man related that I won’t jinx yet by naming. I’m not 100% sure it’ll be arriving in time from the printers. But at any rate, come by and say hi!

Can you tell I’m excited? I am like super excited! Come by and say hi and I will give you a super hi five. I’ll even draw sketches in your X-Men comics.

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Vote for Funny Web Comic!

by Cameron on February 5, 2011

You know, I just realized that I never really formally explained the voting system that Funny Web Comic is based on! Silly me.

Over on the right side of this and every page on Funny Web Comic is a poll where you (yes YOU up at the back there…don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to) have your say on what I draw next.

See, I change Funny Web Comic’s “theme” every week to keep things fresh AND ensure that I’m doing the comics you like the best. The voting has made unlikely stars out of ideas I had no idea would work (Henry, Suburban Life, Old Video Game Jokes…) and relegated ideas I thought would do gangbusters to relative obscurity (Medical Drama Comic, Plant-Man + Flowerin’, Annoyed Vicar…). I think it’s a cool system because it ends up surprising me every week and it keeps the content fresh.

SO. Every week I list five themes…well, four themes and “something new” which is always there to ensure I’ll eventually do something besides jokes about Q-Bert or whatever…and you can vote for which one you think I should do next week. I do five comics a week, so make sure you vote for something I can work with 🙂

At the end of the week I reset the poll and put up a new one. The new poll gets rid of the lowest scoring poll entry (except for “Something New” which is a permanent mainstay) and replaces it with the next theme up on the list on the Comics page. The winning theme stays on the poll list, but is reset to zero votes.

Votes for the middle three themes carry over to the next week, which means that themes that are sort of popular will eventually get their chance to shine. It’s the only way Hive FM ever gets online!

Go on, give it a shot – your opinion is super important! What other comic out there let’s you command the artist around like a personal joke slave? None that’s what.

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An Experiment With Craziness…

by Cameron on January 22, 2011

Today I did something that could easily be described as “financial suicide”. I’ve made Funny Book Comic, the printed book that sells for $15, available as a digital download for $2.

Oh, and it doesn’t have any copy protection on it either.

See, this is why I shouldn’t be left alone with anything more complicated than a box of Duplos.

But here’s the thing though – I can’t escape the nagging feeling that this plan is so crazy that it just might work.

Digital is the future. Anyone who says otherwise is a loon. I haven’t bought a CD in like a decade, yet I’m still having to buy new hard drives to store my increasingly large iTunes folder. I spend about a thousand dollars a year on video games and haven’t been inside a games store since 2008. Why should comics be any different?

I love doing comics online. Back when I started doing mini comics my audience was limited to the number of people that walked into the four or five dingy comic and record stores in my local city that would carry my stuff on commission. Now it’s anyone who has the Internet and the desire to read something that might make them laugh. I love the fact that with each passing year the dinosaurs who used to run the world’s media and commerce channels are roaring louder and louder about the meteors of people making their own movies, shows, music, games, comics etc crashing down on them.

So here we are, just you and me. How does two dollars for over a hundred pages of comics, creator commentary and bonus goodies, delivered instantly to the PDF reader of your choice sound? They say making it DRM-free is an invitation for piracy, but I think that’s just flat out hogwash. I don’t mind paying for things that have value. How about you?

Anyway, this could all blow up in my face, but I’ll keep you updated either way!



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The Floods

by Cameron on January 15, 2011

As some of you know, I live and work in Brisbane, Australia. The city and indeed 75% of the entire state – that’s a size bigger than Texas and a heap of other ‘big’ states combined – are flooded in one of the biggest disasters in the nation’s history.

Thankfully the suburb I live in is too boring to get any of it.

Anyway, I thought about doing Flood Week this week instead of Old Videogame Jokes but I wasn’t sure that anyone outside of Australia would be interested – it wasn’t until later in the week that I realised the story was big news internationally – damnit, I missed my chance to ride the wave of topical humour! So here’s a flood update.

I got three days off from work. That was OK. Driving into work on Tuesday to be told to turn around and come home was a bit stupid, but oh well I tried. After Tuesday afternoon it became pretty obvious that some serious shit was going down, and everyone should just stay away from the city and secure your homes. Thankfully my place is in a town so ass-backwards it’s a miracle we have colour TV here and I’m seen as some kind of Fire God because I know how to operate a cigarette lighter.

So, we spent three days at home watching the news and seeing regional towns we sort of knew about go under, then cities we knew about but were still a while away go under, then all of a sudden it was familiar suburbs going under, and then finally the capitol city itself. It was, as my grandmother always said, off the God damn hook.

Friday we returned to work, and that was OK too. To be honest I didn’t really notice much of a change driving through the city, since I was lucky enough not to have any of the roads I travel on be shut. Not many people at work got too wet, which was nice to hear. During lunch I usually work on the comic but I decided instead to walk over to the Storey Bridge and check out the Brisbane River.

Holy cow. TV doesn’t convey the kinetic energy of a gigantic river flowing at a mammoth speed right underneath you. It’s something in the air that is almost like an electric tingling…and all the raw power of the river vibrating against the bridge. Plus it just looks slightly off kilter, like the entire view of the city is one of those “spot the difference” pictures. The river’s too wide, that pontoon’s missing, all the boats are gone, and everything is brown.

Today we decided to volunteer to help clean up. It seemed only fair – these only so much you can take of watching it all from the high and dry before you know you’ve got to do something. The council were hoping for 6,000 volunteers and instead got over twice that. Way to go, Brisbane 🙂

We got in a bus, which took us to a school, which led us to a queue, which led us to registration, which led to a long path, which led us to another bus. which packed us in and sent us off to a random direction. It was a good crowd, full of the excited energy of people just itching to do something, anything to help. The crowd were friendly, jovial even.

And then we entered Graceville.

Everyone went quiet as quickly you turn off a light switch. By turning a corner, the views of a clean motorway transformed into scenes of suburban devastation. House after house after street after street of sodden wreckage. People just hollowing out their houses completely, knowing everything inside was wrecked beyond repair. In front of of every house there was a six foot pile of what used to be their furniture, clothes and equipment.

Of course the real tragedy is the televisions people had to throw out. So many perfectly good high def LCD screens gone to waste. And oh God, the computers! Those poor computers that were thrown out! You idiots, you could have at least taken out the RAM or something first!

I hope everyone’s Commodore 64s are OK.

So anyway, we got let off and the bus driver went away. Uh. When will the bus be back? What were we meant to do? Where were we meant to go? Why did I leave my iPhone in the car? We didn’t have anyone to tell us the answers to any of those questions, which seemed really wrong to me. The 50 of us from the bus just kind of aimlessly wandered around towards the river until we found some places that could use some help. I ended up helping a kindergarten sort through their toys and furniture, which on the face of it seems a bit silly but you got to figure that every bit helps. The sight of over a hundred people on the one street corner cleaning parks, houses and the slippery road just makes you feel like you’re cumulatively doing something. (Imagine this street corner with enough people to fill a street parade, and you got my view of the day. Oh, and cover it with brown. Edit: Here’s an aerial photo of the corner taken yesterday.)

But man, we could have really used some focus or someone to tell us all what to do next. It felt good to be there, but also like we were kind of going to waste. Plus being effectively stranded with no clear way to get home kinda sucked too.

Anyway, after a few hours of DIGGING, oh Lord digging is my life, we decided to head back to the bus stop and hope there was a bus coming for us. After a slightly concerning half hour a bus turned up to collect volunteers and take them back to where we originally got on, but they wouldn’t let us on because we weren’t part of their group. What group? We weren’t told about any groups! Then the bus driver asked us where our group co-ordinator was, and we’re like what the hell is a group co-ordinator? So the bus driver drove off and left us there. That sucked. That sucked big time.

The next bus driver came along and asked us if we were part of their group. We said yes, of course we are, what kind of silly question is that, we’re all about the group and by the time she figured out we weren’t we had already firmly entrenched ourselves in the bus. Sucker! My big worry is the people that were going to get stranded completely at the end of the day because of a lack of proper organization and communication. Hope that didn’t happen. The wife spoke to someone on the return trip who was in a bus that got so stuck in traffic that everyone got dropped off in the middle of nowhere and got told to find their own way back home and to come back tomorrow. What the hell?

We got back to the school and the second shift volunteers were lining around the block ready to get stuck into it.They gave us all applause as we got off and headed wearily back home covered in mud. That was nice.

Overall, it was a good day of helping hampered by some silly administration issues. Considering they had over twice as many people as expected, I really cant complain too much.

Oh, I lost a shovel today, but I figure whoever finds it the needs it a hell of a lot more than I do

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What Was That Game?

by Cameron on January 8, 2011

Just wanted to give you the heads up on a new* website I just uploaded to the Intertrons!

It’s called What Was That Game? and it’s all about reconnecting people with video games they used to love, but can’t remember the name of. From the site:

Ever tried in vain to remember a computer, console or arcade game from your youth and gone mad in the process? Stayed up until 4AM Googling desperately with only a few vague clues? We’re here to help. Tell us anything you can remember about your game – no matter how weird it seems – and we’ll find it for you as soon possible. Join in and help out other lost gamers, too!

Try it out today – it’s free to sign up and ask / answer questions. I’m even trying to organise giveaways for the most helpful people, so let’s get this ball rolling! I am super, super excited to have it back online, and love using the part of my brain stuffed with obscure video games to help people out.

*I say ‘new’ because it’s actually a relaunch of a site I started back in 2003, packed full of new technological goodness. It’s won “Website of the month” in the prestigious Edge magazine, and did very well for itself until an untimely server crash took it down. Oh, me and my stupid lack of backups!

That’s What Was That Game? folks – call now, operators are standing by!

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